The present disclosure relates in general to the field of computer development, and more specifically, to testing involving a constrained system that may not always be available for use during testing.
Modern software systems continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, with some systems and programs designed to interoperate with, consume data or services from, or otherwise depend on other programs or applications. However, in instances whether the other programs or applications are not under the control of the entity controlling the particular program or application or otherwise constrained, such other programs and applications may not be available to the entity when testing of the particular program or application is desired. For example, an airline may be reluctant to test a new reservation application or client against the airline's live production database in order to avoid negatively impacting (e.g., in terms of database record values or database response time) actual consumer transactions that will be taking place at the same time as testing. Similarly, in order to reduce costs, a financial institution may wish to minimize interactions between a new credit card application system and a partner service due to per-transaction fees, such as those that are charged for each credit check, charged by the partner service. In yet another example, the constrained service may still be in development and thus not yet available to interact with the application under test.